To me, this looks like a sad and an unattractive object. The body of the 19-year-old boy is blackened into charcoal, his teeth peeping through the mouth. I find it difficult to reconcile any kind of notion of the dignity of death with the idea of putting a dead body, however old, in a glass case for people to pay to stare at. The trappings of Tutankhamun's tomb - the sublime funerary mask and the extraordinary beds and caskets - are one thing. They are the trappings of a civilisation, and don't represent a human being, but rather the nobility of his status. But Tutankhamun's corpse is another matter. That, really, is just a human being.
On the whole, we used only to put dead bodies on display in such a manner to express our contempt for the dead. One thinks of the display of the corpses of Mussolini and Clara Petacci at the end of the Second World War in Milan. Very occasionally, a corpse might be displayed in churches to demonstrate its extraordinary sanctity. Recently, things have started to change, and being remarkable neither for great wickedness or great virtue will no longer preserve you against being put on display. I found it very difficult to come to terms with Gunther von Hagen's travelling show of laminated corpses in undignified positions, believing that the dead ought to be treated better than that.
There is something distasteful about the failure to treat the dead with proper respect, to bury or cremate them with due ceremony. For me, and for many people, the respect due to the dead does not diminish with the decades or the centuries.
See the above page for the full story.
Philip Hensher is also featured on the Times Online's Egypt Travel Special pages, with an article entitled My Secret Cairo.
3 comments:
That was the first thing that I thought! Back "when" it was decided to leave him in his tomb out of respect. Now I see no respect. I agree to preserving the remains, but that doesn't mean to put it on display. I would have been very happy to see the coffin, with the king inside, put into the glass case. Much better. Or put the glass case inside the sarcophagus, with the coffin inside that.
And the picture of Zahi looking down upon him with respect? I can see the dollar signs in his eyes. Yes, he needs money for his work. But there are some things that must be left alone. Tutankhamun is one of them.
The other remains in the museums of the world were not found in their tombs in the same manner as Tutankhamun. I am not happy with this move. I am not at all happy. He should be left along.
Dignity? Zahi wouldn't know the meaning of the word. He is to busy promoting himself. Put Tutankamum back in his coffin. Just display that and give him the respect he should have.
An answer is very difficult.....
I agree: maybe king Tut wouldn't be happy to be displaied in front of thousands of people.
But this is true also for all mummies displaied in the world (I think first at Cairo museum: kings as Sethi I, Ramesse II, Merenptah, Tao II....).
And I have another question: is it right to discover tombs? Will we be glad to know that, in a far future, our bones will be in a plexiglass box?
I don't know, but I love ancient Egypt and for me was a big emotion to be face to face with great pharaohs.
Another thing is talking about "duce" and his lover petacci: it was a bad show in piazzale (circus) Loreto in Milano, but it was the end of war in Italy, and the end of nazi-fascism.
My granfather was persecuted by "camicie nere" (black shirts) during fascism: he told me it was a bad thing to put mussolini in piazzale Loreto, but he never cried for duce's death.....
I don't think we can comparate this two episodes; king Tut corpse and mussolini's one.
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